How Shadowverse Became a Major Player in the CCG Genre

When I first heard about Shadowverse last year, I had no expectations whatsoever. My initial reaction was to assume that it was simply the latest in the stream of digital CCGs that were springing up in the wake of Hearthstone’s incredible success. I didn’t know anything of the story behind the game, and while I’d come across developer Cygames’ work in a tangential sense (mostly at TGS), I didn’t even know the studio by name.

It soon became clear that Shadowverse was worth paying attention to, however. Hopping in revealed a pretty unique experience – each class had a very clear identity (often driven by bespoke mechanics), the core gameplay incorporated the ability to “evolve” cards, and the card design gave combo and control archetypes plenty of viable tools to use.

Since then I’ve continued to play, and have seen the English language community around the game grow. I’ve also seen first-hand just how big the studio is. What's the story behind Shadowverse? And how did developer Cygames get here?

Hugely successful.

“Cygames was set up in 2011 by our CEO, Koichi Watanabe, to make the sort of games that he wanted to make,” says Yuito Kimura, Game Producer and Executive Director at Cygames. “That was during the social game boom, so there was a big opportunity for self-publishing, and that enabled him to set up the company with the main goal of simply making the sort of games that he liked to play.”

One of those games was Rage of Bahamut, which – while popular in the West - was something of a phenomenon in Japan. Its success “actually wasn’t a surprise to us,” admits Kimura. “The development team all thought it was going to be a big hit while we were working on it. We had a lot of confidence in it and could see during development that it was a good game. But the scale of its success gave us the opportunity to make more games, and the type of games that we ourselves wanted to play. And at that time we were just 30 people, but that success gave us the resources to grow the company.”

Cygames, then, was built on the back of Rage of Bahamut, and has been growing ever since. The Shadowverse team alone “is now about 100 people,” says Kimura. The success of Rage of Bahamut also established an IP for the studio to work with, so it’s no surprise that Shadowverse takes place in the same world, with many of the same characters. It re-uses art assets from Rage of Bahamut and it also draws on it for thematic inspiration. The second Shadowverse expansion, for instance, was called Rise of Bahamut.

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“I have been a fan of Magic: The Gathering since high school. And I wanted to make a really strategic, tactical card game.” - Yuito Kimura.

It is, however, a radically different game - Shadowverse very much takes its gameplay cues from Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone. Work initially began on it in 2014, which is when Kimura left the Granblue Fantasy team to oversee the new project. “I have always been a fan of card games,” he tells me, thinking about the inspiration for Cygames to make a CCG. “I have been a fan of Magic: The Gathering since high school. And I wanted to make a really strategic, tactical card game.”

Kimura wasn’t alone in his obsession. “Japan has always had a lot of fans of card games,” he says. “Everybody played Yu-Gi-Oh! at school, or Pokémon, and everyone watches anime based on or around card games. So we thought there would be a big appetite for the game. And this type of card game had never really been done before in Japan.”

Not only that, but the timing was right. “This was around the time that the mobile game market in Japan was really beginning to transition to smartphones,” he explains, “and I felt that the technology was there to make a really strategic card game. Borrowing the concept (and some card art) from Rage of Bahamut, I wanted to make a smartphone game with ‘Evolution’ as the core concept. I wanted to take things to a new level.”

This Evolution mechanic is certainly a compelling design element. It’s an ability that unlocks in the mid-game and can only be used a limited number of times. Any follower played to the board can be evolved, and most of the time this means a +2/+2 stat boost, but there are evolutions that do other things, such as spawn additional followers or allow the player to cast targeted damage. The most important part of the mechanic, however, is the fact that if you evolve a follower on the turn you play it, it’s then able to attack opposing followers. Your evolution points, then, are like having additional removal in your deck, and helps promote games that swing back and forth.

A simple example of an evolution with massive utility. In an aggro meta this card's evolution can kill two enemy followers and heal your leader.

“Looking at analogue card games in Japan in recent years, I think having some design elements that foster some sort of comeback or dramatic turnaround seemed really important,” says Lead Game Designer Naoyuki Miyashita, when I ask about the initial goals for the Evolution system. “Another problem with CCGs in general is that they tend to favour whoever plays first, so we wanted to make sure we included elements that would balance the win-ratio regardless of who plays first.

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“From the very start... we wanted to base the game rules around the Evolve function because... it helped to enable comebacks, and it helped to balance the game in spite of who starts first." - Naoyuki Miyashita.

“From the very start of development,” he continues, “we wanted to base the game rules around the Evolve function because it balanced both of those things – it helped to enable comebacks, and it helped to balance the game in spite of who starts first.

“Obviously the Evolve function itself evolved over time; it took about half a year to settle upon the design that made it into the final game. But that was the inspiration for the design.”

The idea that “Every card should evolve,” was one of three key points at the beginning of development, according to Miyashita. The others were that “the game should be accessible enough to play on a smartphone. And the game should be competitive enough to become a viable e-sport title.”

In terms of that second pillar, Shadowverse has since been released on PC, but – in Japan especially – its primary identity is as a smartphone game, and that means both limitations and opportunities to develop very specifically for the platform. “One key element” that sets Shadowverse apart from other CCGs and was driven by the platform, says Miyashita “is the length of time it takes for a battle, which is relatively short at just 5-10 minutes.” This has allowed the team to design some incredibly strong combo and late-game cards, so that matches don’t get dragged out for ages.

Miyashita: "The Havencraft class changed the most [during initial design]. It was originally intended to be based around healing to reflect the original conception of a priestly character, but we ended up designing a lot of complicated features based on the personality of Eris that didn’t quite work. In the end, though, we were very pleased to come up with the countdown amulet function, which we think is a pretty original game mechanic."

The fact that Shadowverse launched on mobile also didn’t constrain Cygames’ aspirations for it. “We want this to be a really long-term success,” says Kimura. “We want this game to be around in ten years. We want to make a game that people will talk about to their friends and colleagues. A real water-cooler game. And we really want it to be successful all over the world – not just in Japan. Magic: The Gathering was popular worldwide, so we hope that our game can emulate that.”

Having the right people is obviously crucial to realising that goal. “At the end of 2014 we started work on the game design with a team made up of myself and 3 CCG Designers,” says Miyashita. “We gradually increased the headcount in preparation for the game’s release in June of 2016, and we continued to recruit after the game’s release. Now we have about 20 people on the [Design] team.

“While I oversee the overall design of the card game element itself,” he continues, “the CCG Design Team is divided into two groups. The CCG Designers are responsible for coming up with card designs (such as the features and abilities of new cards) while the CCG Playtesters test those new cards to make sure there are no problems. The majority of [the] team is made up of CCG Playtesters.”

These playtesters still use physical cards and physical systems to keep track of things like Play Points, Spellboosts and the like. It seems counter-intuitive for a game that was designed to incorporate, as Miyashita tells me, “features that could only work in a digital card game,” but it allows the team to iterate quickly. Plus, with so many experienced Magic: The Gathering players, there’s a history there with paper TCGs.

Two Shadowverse playtesters.

“Experience with Magic: The Gathering is certainly one of the skills that we look for (we even have a previous Magic World Champion, Junya Iyanaga, on the team),” confirms Miyashita. “But we also have team members with experience of other digital card games, and we have RTS champions and pro MOBA players on the team too. The most important skill is the ability to analyse games, and the ability to express your own opinion clearly in reports to other parts of the development team.

With its team of veteran players and designers, Shadowverse has also been targeting its third key pillar – and another lofty goal – tournament play. “One major goal was to really invigorate the e-sports scene in Japan, and to come up with a title that could really sit at the heart of that scene,” Miyashita tells me. That plan has been in full swing for a while. “We have actually had to set up a whole team dedicated to supporting the community over here,” explains Kimura. “We provide support for independently organised tournaments, as well as running large-scale official tournaments like the JCG Shadowverse Open.

“The game is already very successful as an e-sport in Japan,” Kimura says, “with an ecosystem that ranges from small-scale tournaments at hobby shops to large-scale offline tournaments with cash prizes and so on.” The home market is just the first stage, however. The team’s next goal is “to develop a similar sort of community outside Japan too. It would be great to have some sort of World Final, or International Cup to see players competing from all over the world.”

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“One major goal was to really invigorate the e-sports scene in Japan, and to come up with a title that could really sit at the heart of that scene.” - Naoyuki Miyashita.

The first step down that road for Shadowverse has been the North American esports league in partnership with NGE. From my perspective it feels like awareness of – and interest in – Shadowverse has been growing steadily, but there’s no doubt Japan is still the game’s heartland. “I think the ratio of players inside Japan to outside Japan is something like 5:1 at the moment,” confirms Kimura.

That’s a great base from which to grow, but there’s no doubt the CCG space is becoming ever more crowded in the West. Hearthstone continues to be a juggernaut, and now it’s joined by games like The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Duelyst and Faeria, with others, like Gwent, in beta. All of these games are competing for attention, which means that attracting and retaining new players is incredibly important. “We regard new players with the utmost of respect,” responds Miyashita, when I ask about the new player experience. “For any PvP game, having a lot of active users is of crucial importance, as it is for any successful e-sports title. And of course having a lot of active users depends on having a lot of new users. That’s why we try to reward players with a lot of card packs – for playing through the tutorial, for example, or when we launch new card expansions. We want new users and non-paying users to be able to enjoy the game just as much as we want to support users who have large card collections. We also added Prebuilt Decks made up of popular cards for new users who want to play with popular decks as soon as possible.”

It’s a refreshing approach, and if you’re like me - someone who came to the game with no real expectations – you may just find yourself still playing a year later; looking forward to the next influx of cards, and wondering what the future may hold for this unique card battler and its ambitious developer.

Cam Shea is senior editor in IGN's Sydney office and spends too much time obsessing over CCGs. Tweet at him here.